domainname.com vs. www.domainname.com

[HH Services Limited]

I received this morning this message on an email from prestashop.com: 

 

""  2. Use only one Domain

You’re thinking, I definitely only have one domain but you need to decide whether you refer to your site as http://www.myonlinestore.com or http://myonlinestore.com.

It’s important to choose only one because search engine crawlers treat both domains as two separate sites. When both sites are crawled, search engines will find duplicate content and it will result in poorer rankings for your store. In order to avoid this you should redirect all URL’s to your main page. ""

 

Now I got really confused on this... Is it suggesting to leave dead one of them. I know sites which have very good rankings and the use both. I use both and everybody seems to use both. It also makes things easier to customers which at the end it´s the sole phylosophy of Google.

 

Any comments on this?

 

Good day to all!!!

Edited May 14, 2015 by De La Riviere (see edit history)

[jetx]

I would never use both as it is a duplication, choose one or the other. In my experience the great rankings you speak of are short lived and you'll see a huge fall off after a few months because of it.

 

Where did you hear it has become good practice to use both?

[HH Services Limited]

I would never use both as it is a duplication, choose one or the other. In my experience the great rankings you speak of are short lived and you'll see a huge fall off after a few months because of it.

 

Where did you hear it has become good practice to use both?

Here: https://www.prestashop.com/blog/en/5-profitable-tips-to-drastically-improve-seo-for-your-online-store/#comment-281254

 

The thing is that everyone who is ranked 1st page on google uses both. Try making a search and opening one of the sites on 1st page. Now browse those sites with or without www. You will see that they all redirect you to the same site...

[jetx]

It's a bit like having 20 parked domains. You can absolutely clean up in google, etc. And this will last for a few months, maybe more. Eventually you'll be dropped 10 pages. So you need to use mod_rewrite for all those conditions to prevent duplication.

[HH Services Limited]

It's a bit like having 20 parked domains. You can absolutely clean up in google, etc. And this will last for a few months, maybe more. Eventually you'll be dropped 10 pages. So you need to use mod_rewrite for all those conditions to prevent duplication.

Not sure what you mean, the pointing comes from the domain registrar where we point the root domain and the www. domain to the website... Anyways, almost eveybody on google 1st pages point root domain and www. domain to their sites. At the end its all about the customers, not about google and this is google´s main policy. No?

[NemoPS]

As far as I know (and I hope I'm not saying anything idiot, dh42 would be enlightening in this case ) www. is considered a subdomain, and it's therefore suggested not to use it to prefix the site's url, but leave the plain TLD alone, instead

[HH Services Limited]

As far as I know (and I hope I'm not saying anything idiot, dh42 would be enlightening in this case ) www. is considered a subdomain, and it's therefore suggested not to use it to prefix the site's url, but leave the plain TLD alone, instead

Nemo, I see that www.nemops.com redirects to nemops.com which at the end its like nemops.com redirecting to www.nemops.com for the google issue of duplicate content no? Everybody I see on keywords "good quality pants" and on google´s 1st page  redirect their root domain to www.domain.com ((https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-best-brands-for-mens-dress-pants

 http://www.brooksbrothers.com/mens/dress-pants/0219,default,sc.html 

https://www.reddit.com/r/Frugal/comments/1zam3v/where_can_i_buy_affordable_decentquality_womens/ 

http://www.styleforum.net/t/142127/good-quality-affordable-dress-pants-from-a-store-that-offers-tailoring-advice to name a few)) so they must not be doing too bad... No?

[jetx]

I think you're a bit confused, or perhaps I missed your point. Of course all sites use both, but those sites you refer to (eg brooks brothers) use mod_rewrite to rewrite the url to use either www or not depending on which one you want, so as to not have duplicate content. Same with the parked domains I mentioned.

[HH Services Limited]

I think you're a bit confused, or perhaps I missed your point. Of course all sites use both, but those sites you refer to (eg brooks brothers) use mod_rewrite to rewrite the url to use either www or not depending on which one you want, so as to not have duplicate content. Same with the parked domains I mentioned.

Sorry, we are talking about slightly different things: I meant that pointing comes from your domain registrar, and from there it goes towards your site where yes you can rewrite code to point to www. or not. Google will only see one version if both (root domain and www.domain) are redirected to onlyone: domain.com or www.domain.com, Right?

Anyways, I see most people using www   what´s best choice?

Thanks...

[NemoPS]

If www. redirects to the non-www version it's not considered duplicate content, for the reason the real url (www-less) is the only one being indexed, the other spawning a 301 redirect (like mine)

[HH Services Limited]

If www. redirects to the non-www version it's not considered duplicate content, for the reason the real url (www-less) is the only one being indexed, the other spawning a 301 redirect (like mine)

Big question: If I purchase two different domain names and I point them to my prestashop where obviously they will automatically get redirected to the "shop domain" chosen on preferences/SEO&URL. Will they get 301 redirects and google will not penalize any domain (especially the 1st used domain) for duplicate contain?

[Tung at RockPOS.com]

I'm not an SEO expert redirects is not enough.

According to this article, you should use Canical Link Tag along with 301 redirect:

https://moz.com/blog/duplicate-content-block-redirect-or-canonical

 

Cheers,

Tung

[Jose J. Fernández]

It doesn't make any difference from the SEO point of view. Just take care of redirecting visitors to the version of your choice, and try to use the canonical meta tag. Whatever you choose, stick to it and avoid changes. If you changed from www to non-www or vice-versa, you must redirect every single URL in your site to avoid losing your rank in search engines.

 

I have written an article on this topic: Why use -or not- www on your domain name (in Spanish)

 

You would want to use www because of some DNS tricks you can use, and for some bandwidth-savings with a CDN in a subdomain, among some other reasons. You would want to stop using www mostly for aesthetical reasons

Edited May 21, 2015 by Jose J. Fernández (see edit history)

[HH Services Limited]

Great article and good explnation. Should we add that prestashop automatically adds the 301 redirects?